“Tom Gross’s article about the forgotten Rachels is remarkable and should be read in full”-- David Frum (former senior foreign policy speechwriter for President George W. Bush)

“The air-brushing of Rachel Corrie has now become near sanctification. And a new play in London perpetuates the myth, as Tom Gross explains”-- Andrew Sullivan, on his website

“Article of the week”-- The British news magazine, The Week

“Corrie, a 23-year old radical, has become a hero of the international left, but as Tom Gross highlights, forgotten are the other Rachels”-- New York Post, editorial

“Corrie’s death was unfortunate, but more unfortunate is a Western media and cultural establishment that lionizes ‘martyrs’ for illiberal causes while ignoring the victims those causes create, as Tom Gross points out”-- National Review, editorial

“As Tom Gross noted there are some plays you won’t be seeing at the Royal Court any time soon, such as: My Name Is Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 5, 13 and 6 while sitting at home)”-- Mark Steyn, in The New Criterion

“Tom Gross’s article is not just a memorial to the murdered Rachels but to the lost culture of truth and justice, now eclipsed in Britain by lies and racial hatred”-- British newspaper columnist Melanie Phillips

“Masterful… this article should be published worldwide”-- Adina Kutnicki, in The Jerusalem Post

The Forgotten Rachels

Anti-Israel propaganda sells out on the London stage

By Tom Gross
The Spectator magazine (London)
October 22, 2005

Rachel Thaler, 16,
blown up in a pizzeria

Rachel Levi, 19, murdered
while waiting for the bus

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

“My Name is Rachel Corrie,” a new play based on the writings
of the young American radical who was accidentally killed during an anti-Israeli
demonstration in Gaza in 2003, opened in April 2005 at London’s prestigious
Royal Court, a venue described by The New York Times as “the most important
theatre in Europe.” In October, it reopened again in near record time,
at the same theatre. In November the “Cantata concert for Rachel Corrie”
– co-sponsored by the UK government Arts Council – had its world
premiere at another London theatre. Lincoln Center in New York has expressed
interest to the Royal Court in staging the play, as have dozens of schools
and universities. And that the play’s co-director was “Harry
Potter” and “Die Hard” star Alan Rickman only served to
add a touch of Hollywood glamour to the cult of Rachel Corrie.

But other Rachels have lost their lives as well – Jewish victims
of the Intifada. Does anyone remember them? In Britain, where the play is
being staged, how many people even know the name of Rachel Thaler, a British
citizen who was murdered by a Palestinian suicide bomber in an Israeli shopping mall at the age of 16?

“Not a single British journalist has ever interviewed me or mentioned
Rachel’s death,” her mother Ginette Thaler told me three and
a half years after her murder. Below, an article of mine published in the weekly
British magazine, The Spectator, explores these phenomena and also marks
the first time Rachel Thaler’s name has been mentioned in the mainstream
British media. Earlier, in April 2005, I wrote another piece on “The Forgotten
Rachels” for The Jerusalem Post, to mark the play’s initial
staging.

-- Tom Gross

THE ARTICLE: THE FORGOTTEN RACHELS

Rachel Levy, 17, blown up
in a Jerusalem grocery store

Rachel Charhi, 36, blown up
while sitting in a café

Rachel Gavish, 50, killed with her
husband and son while at home

Rachel Kol, 53, who worked for
20 years in the neurology lab at
Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital,
murdered with her husband in a
drive-by shooting by the Fatah
al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in
July 2005 (in the midst of a
supposed Palestinian truce)

Rachel Ben Abu, 16, killed with
her teenage friends by a suicide
bomber at the Netanya shopping
mall, in July 2005 (in the midst
of a supposed Palestinian truce)

Rachel Shabo, 40, murdered with
her three sons aged 5, 13 and 6,
while sitting at home

By Tom Gross, Oct. 22, 2005

RACHEL Thaler, aged 16, was
blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day
struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers
on 16 February 2002.

Even though Thaler was a British citizen, born in London, where her grandparents
still live, her death has never been mentioned in a British newspaper.

Rachel Corrie, on the other hand, an American radical who died in 2003
while acting as a human shield during an Israeli anti-terror operation in
Gaza, has been widely featured in the British press. According to the Guardian
website, she has been written about or referred to on 57 separate occasions
in the Guardian alone, including three articles the Saturday before last.

The cult of Rachel Corrie doesn’t stop there. Last week the play,
My Name is Rachel Corrie, reopened at the larger downstairs auditorium at
the Royal Court Theatre (a venue which the New York Times recently described
as “the most important theatre in Europe”). It previously played
to sold-out audiences at the upstairs theatre when it opened in April. (It
is very rare to revive a play so quickly.)

On 1 November the “Cantata concert for Rachel Corrie” –
co-sponsored by the Arts Council – has its world premiere at the Hackney
Empire.

NOT A CAUSE CÉLÈBRE IN BRITAIN

But Rachel Thaler, unlike Rachel Corrie, was Jewish. And unlike Corrie,
Jewish victims of Middle East violence have not become a cause célèbre
in Britain. This lack of response is all the more disturbing at a time when
an increasing number of British Jews feel that there has been a sharp rise
in anti-Semitism.

Thaler is by no means the only Jewish Rachel whose violent death has been
entirely ignored by the British media. Other victims of the Intifada include
Rachel Levy (aged 17, blown up in a grocery store), Rachel Levi (19, shot
while waiting for the bus), Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband, son
and father while at home celebrating a Passover meal), Rachel Charhi (blown
up while sitting in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving three young children), Rachel
Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 5, 13 and 16 while at home), Rachel
Ben Abu (16, blown up outside the entrance of a Netanya shopping mall) and
Rachel Kol, 53, who worked at a Jerusalem hospital and was killed with her
husband in a Palestinian terrorist attack in July a few days after the London
bombs.

Corrie’s death was undoubtedly tragic but, unlike the death of these
other Rachels, it was almost certainly an accident. She was killed when
she was hit by an Israeli army bulldozer she was trying to stop from demolishing
a structure suspected of concealing tunnels used for smuggling weapons.

Unfortunately for those who have sought to portray Corrie as a peaceful
protester, photos of her burning a mock American flag and stirring up crowds
in Gaza at a pro-Hamas rally were published by the Associated Press and
on Yahoo News on 15 February 2003, a month before she died. (Those photos
were not used in the British press.)

While Thaler’s parents, after donating their murdered daughter’s
organs for transplant surgery, grieved quietly, Corrie’s parents embarked
on a major publicity campaign with strong political overtones. They travelled
to Ramallah to accept a plaque from Yasser Arafat on behalf of their daughter.
They circulated her emails and diary entries to a world media eager to publicise
them. They have written op-ed pieces, including a recent one in the Guardian.

“ARMED STRUGGLE” IS A PALESTINIAN “RIGHT”

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the group with which Corrie
was affiliated, is routinely described as a “peace group” in
the media. Few make any mention of the ISM’s meeting with the British
suicide bombers Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Muhammad Hanif who, a few days
later, blew up Mike’s Place, a Tel Aviv pub, killing three and injuring
dozens, including British citizens. Or of the ISM’s sheltering in
its office of Shadi Sukiya, a leading member of Islamic Jihad. Or of the
fact that in its mission statement the ISM said “armed struggle”
is a Palestinian “right”.

According to the “media co-ordinator” of the ISM, Flo Rosovski,
“‘Israel’ is an illegal entity that should not exist”
– which at any rate clarifies the ISM’s idea of peace.

Indeed, partly because of the efforts of Corrie’s fellow activists
in the ISM, the Israeli army was unable to stop the flow of weapons through
the tunnels near where she was demonstrating. Those weapons were later used
to kill Israeli children in the town of Sderot in southern Israel, and elsewhere.

However, in many hundreds of articles on Corrie published in the last two
years, most papers have been careful to omit such details. So have actor
Alan Rickman and Guardian journalist Katharine Viner, co-creators of My
Name is Rachel Corrie, leaving almost all the critics who reviewed the play
completely ignorant about the background to the events with which it deals.

So in April, when reviewers first wrote about the play, they tended to
take it completely at face value. “Corrie was murdered after joining
a non-violent Palestinian resistance organisation,” wrote Emma Gosnell
in the Sunday Telegraph. The Evening Standard, for example, described it
as a “true-life tragedy” in which Corrie’s “unselfish
goodness shines through”.

Rachel Corrie, 23, burning a mock
U.S. flag at a pro-Hamas rally in Gaza

Only one critic (Clive Davis in the Times) saw the play for the propaganda
it is. At one point Corrie declares, “The vast majority of Palestinians
right now, as far as I can tell, are engaging in Gandhian non-violent resistance.”
As Davis notes, “Even the late Yasser Arafat might have blushed at
that one.”

But ultimately the play, and many of the articles about Corrie that have
appeared, are not really about the young American activist who died in such
tragic circumstances. They are about promoting a hate-filled and glaringly
one-sided view of Israel.

(Tom Gross is the former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph.)

More forgotten victims

Partly thanks to the efforts of Corrie and her fellow activists,
the flow of explosives from Egypt into Gaza continued – and were later
used to kill children in southern Israel. Below, two of the victims: Dorit
Aniso, 2 and Yuval Abebeh, 4, killed in Sderot in southern Israel by missiles
fired from Gaza on, September 29, 2004.